0526. Mike Oldfield
Tubular Bells

So... this is what happens when a multi-instrumentalist locks himself in the studio for about half a year? Two tracks? Yep. Two tracks spanning a total of forty-nine minutes and meant to be played back to back.

Tubular Bells (Part One) is the signature song, starting with a piano theme repeated almost in absurdum (later on repeated on glockenspiel, organ and whatnot), morphing into a folk-style phase, which moves into a bit of a saloon-feel.
The fuzzed out guitars that come in at an angle after about fourteen minutes into pt. one isn't entirely enticing, but after a couple of bars they feel kind of natural.

The five-minute outro (or rather: bridge to the second movement) with presentation of the instruments is kind of novel (okay, so Ravi Shankar's done it before, but that was for a instructional album), but fits nice.

Tubular Bells (Part Two) blends seamlessly into the soft ending of part one and continues the exploration of themes and instruments, but here it (sort of) goes awry.
Cause around twelve minutes into pt. two Mike starts to grunt and scream - a thing he calls the "Piltdown Man", but sounding very much like a Klingon fighting a werewolf (yes, that's a Star Trek reference).
But still, it's an impressive piece of music and I guess it's understandable if Mike got a little bit wierd after a while. Tubular Bells is actually so cool that if it wasn't for the Piltdown mannerisms, this could possibly have been on the short-list.

This deserves recognition for being both a hugely successful album despite being an almost orchestral piece and for being damn good album.